foreign policy

Should the U.S. defend Taiwan?

Council on Foreign Relations
Defense Priorities
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale

Lyle Goldstein

Defense Priorities

April 17th, 2022
U.S. defense policy has long suffered from a lack of realism, which has spawned disasters, ranging from Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan. Unfortunately, similar idealistic inclinations could involve the U.S. in a highly risky Taiwan scenario.
It is not difficult to fathom why the U.S. might lose a war over Taiwan. Since Taiwan is less than 100 miles away from China, the Chinese military can commit its full weight of combat power, including hundreds of warships and thousands of aircraft, drones, and missiles to this campaign. By comparison, U.S. forces in the region are quite limited – just several dozen ships and aircraft – at the end of a 6,000 mile-long supply line. This is hardly an advantageous position as many war games have illustrated. Beijing would also benefit from enormous first-mover advantages, as well as a high will to fight, implying a willingness to accept huge combat losses.
Even in the happy circumstance that no war does occur, the Pentagon will still bankrupt the American people trying to construct a military system to defend such a vulnerable position, costing Americans trillions. Should the U.S. take such brazen risks for an island called “Republic of China?” Americans might realize that they are intervening in yet another civil war and wisely refrain. Kissinger and Nixon understood this fifty years ago and agreed to the One China Policy. The U.S. has no treaty commitment to defend Taiwan. Most fundamentally, it would be foolhardy to risk nuclear war over Taiwan.
David Sacks reaches for every possible argument to support defense of Taiwan, but none are persuasive. Japan and the Philippines are not threatened by China, unless they participate in a Taiwan scenario. This is made clear when one realizes that neither Tokyo nor Manila spend much more than 1% of GDP on defense. Sacks articulates economic concerns , such as “higher prices for iPhones,” but such economic concerns cannot be taken seriously when tens of thousands of American lives (or many more) would be put at risk. Neither the global trading system, nor America’s technology prowess, are at stake in a Taiwan scenario.
Even more wrong-headed is the neo-Wilsonian notion that a “democracy would be extinguished,” justifying such a risk of war. Democracy has been lost in both Afghanistan and Hong Kong recently with no discernible negative impact on U.S. national security. If the U.S. wants to spread democracy in the Asia-Pacific, it might focus on countries like Philippines and Vietnam at considerably lower risk.
Finally, Sacks contends that Taiwan is needed to “bottle up” China’s military and protect U.S. credibility. It is far from clear that China needs to be contained in this aggressive manner, but also would any great power accept being “bottled up”? This position, an echo of the volatile 1950s, no longer accords with the actual balance of power, and may well prompt an explosive escalation spiral.
A more realistic U.S. defense strategy, which excludes Taiwan, will actually be much more credible to Americans, treaty allies, and potential adversaries too.
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